Friday, October 10, 2008

Terms

My favorite new term:

Counter-cyclical. Used in an ICV2 article to describe the game industry in poor economic times. When people are stressed and the economy is in trouble, they go to traditional past times. Game stores actually do well in rough economic times, veteran store owners say. A retail consultant quoted in the New York Times said:

It might be a holiday of movie tickets and board games, not of big-screen televisions and vacations. This is the cocooning that we saw in the ’80s, for goodness sakes, that we’re seeing coming back.

My most disliked term:

Lifestyle job. Used by a game industry retailer to describe his choice of running a game store. I will admit that most people do it as a kind of lifestyle change, but it hasn't been how I've done things for years now. It has those gentleman farmer implications, that you're toilng away at a job that's only slightly more than a hobby. There are a handful of game store owners that make a good living at this, and that's what I personally aspire to, mostly because it's the only way to survive in this SF Bay Area without the WWGJ (wife with a good job).

Lifestyle job takes the place of my most disliked term from hub and spoke stores. This term is used to describe how smaller regional stores act as feeders for larger regional stores. Neat idea if you happen to be the hub, but offensive if you see yourself as the smaller spoke.